Millefiori – products made of polymer clay

Millefiori – from the Italian «mille» – thousand and «fiori» – flowers. This is a technic of oldtimer Italian glassblowers. Image is formed on the glass along the entire length of the glass cylinder. Simply put, the pattern is made of colored glass (usually not sophisticated flowers). Then, get a cylinder is heated and stretched to the desired thickness in a thin glass rod or twig, so that on each section remained the same pattern. But don’t worry, today we won’t blow glass … Millefiori technique has been used successfully in other, more “gentle” materials. For example, polymer clay – a very popular modern «hand made» material

Products made of polymer clay: supplies and tools

polymer clay

Pasta machine for polymer clay (or rolling pin for test)

underlay material, I took black

1. Rolling two small balls of polymer clay

2. Roll out them to form rectangles with rounded corners.

3. Next ‘stretch’ the workpiece through the pasta machine for polymer clay (can be used regular pasta machine). If there are no machines for paste polymer clay, workpiece can be rolled using the available tools, such as a rolling pin for the test.

4. circumcised all superfluous, get thin rectangles, cut them diagonally into triangles.

5. Fold them in two layers in the two-color square.

6. Roll out them with pasta machine or manually to the state of color transitions folded in half in length, the resulting preform again roll out.

7. Get the beautiful ‘painting’ with watercolor color transitions, sliding it into a tight tube, cut off the excess.

8. Take the black clay and rolled it into a thin layer.

9. Cut the colored blank into four equal parts.

10. connects it with a black seam.

11. Forming a new blank with black, neatly cut obliquely.

12. Puts on the ‘substrate’ of black seam and cut off the excess.

Putting ‘construction’. At this stage it is already pretty clear vision of the future leaf. Rolls it into a black layer.

The resulting preform is stretched in the ‘sausage’ of approximately 10 inches (25 cm).

Cut the ‘sausage’. On the ‘saw cut’ get leaf with veins. Attach ‘sausage’ shaped leaf and cut into blanks by 0.2 inches (0.5 cm).

From these pieces can be assembled bracelet, beads (do not forget before firing to make holes for assembly) or place a small glass jar. You can make original candlestick.

Then we put our product in your home oven and bake as directed on the package of clay.

Let’s look at the clock – total, with a break for coffee, it took only 50 minutes. And what was the result! The Italians, of course, well done, but they should learn our wit))